WHAT AN EMBARRASSMENT! Sec. Steve Mnuchin Has To Explain Congressional Law the Anti-Trump Congresswoman Maxine Waters

Secretary Steve Mnuchin, speaking at a House Financial Services hearing on Tuesday, faced questions from Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) about the Trump administration’s supposed refusal to implement sanctions on Russia.



Waters asked why the president delegated sanction policy to the State Department, a move that Mnuchin explained the law gave him the authority to do.



“The final conclusion is that nothing has been done. There has been no waiver. There has been no delay. There is nothing that has been done. You did not waive or delay sanctions,” the representative responded, unsatisfied. “There’s been nothing done on sanctions.”



Mnuchin told Waters that an “enormous amount of work” had gone into crafting sanctions against Russian individuals, based on intelligence assessments. He explained that he could not discuss classified intelligence in the public setting of the hearing.



“There will be sanctions that come out of that,” the secretary added.



Waters continued to press for an answer, but Mnuchin again told her that the answers were in a classified report.



The representative didn’t seem to understand the significance of classified information, so Mnuchin had to explain to her that the law called for both a classified and unclassified report. The Treasury Department is basing its actions on the classified intelligence, he said.



Waters called on the president to declassify sensitive intelligence on Russian efforts the same way he declassified the Nunes memo.